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ARTICLE: Scientists Made a Delicious GMO Beer Without Hops

The following is an article recently published by Esquire detailing the research of scientists from the University of California Berkeley showing how they used DNA-editing software to create sustainable hops-replacements for brewing beer. 

People make a lot of noise about GMOs: They aren't natural; we don't know what they'll do to our bodies. But if GMOs could save the beer industry, would anyone really give a damn?

 

 

The hops used to flavor beer require a whole lot of water to cultivate. An average of 50 pints of H2O goes into growing enough for just one pint, which is expensive and unsustainable. But you need them to make beer taste like, well, beer. Or at least you did. It looks like scientists have succeeded in replicating that sour, hoppy, delightfully beery taste without using actual hops.

Lagunitas is an example of the many craft breweries that use more hops than Big Beer companies—compare the flavor of a Lagunitas IPA to a Miller Lite—leading to an increased industry demand for the flower, and using up even more water. These genetically engineered hops require less water (and fertilizer). And because they suck up fewer resources, they might also lower the price of beer, just in time for beer prices to get ratcheted up thanks to President Trump's tariff on aluminum.

If breweries start using GMO hops, we could have many more years of sustainable drinking at a lower cost with the same beery taste. All you have to do is pop the tab on a science experiment.

In a research paper published Tuesday, scientists at the University of California Berkeley introduced an alternative to hops. They were able to mimic that refreshingly funky beer taste by altering the genome of brewer's yeast, fusing the yeast with genes from mint and basil plants, the Guardian reports.

The results were so convincing that they taste tested them on employees at the local Lagunitas Brewing Company, who admitted beer brewed with the GMO hops was hoppier than beer brewed the old-fashioned way. The tasting notes? "Fruit Loops and orange blossom," without any "off-flavors," the employees said.